Holmes: Iraqi military's still not so tough a nut to crack

Posted: Sunday, September 29, 2002

The latest complaint voiced in the media is that our senior leadership, nary a combat veteran in the bunch, is plunging willy-nilly into a new Gulf War, with scant concern for the lives of American soldiers.

James

Holmes

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The ''chickenhawk'' invective flung at Bush & Co. would undoubtedly amuse Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the nation through two world wars without having served in uniform. But there's a deadly serious question amid the silliness: How hard will it be to defeat Saddam Hussein's armed forces?

Not very; but the campaign could exact a steep cost. On paper the Iraqi military looks like a tough nut to crack. Even after being decimated by the grand coalition of 1990-91, the army still boasts some 350,000 troops -- 100,000 more than any likely U.S.-led coalition will field. Sixteen regular divisions are scattered around the country, six Republican Guard divisions are positioned around Baghdad, and units of the Special Republican Guard defend presidential palaces and other key sites. But brute numbers are misleading in this case. Here's why:

Paranoia about internal subversion: Baghdad is obsessed with internal security as much as with any foreign threat -- even a threat from the world's lone superpower. Consider the disposition of Iraqi forces. Special Republican Guard units enjoy the trust of the Iraqi dictator, and thus are assigned to assure his personal well-being and protect the regime's weapons of mass destruction. The Republican Guard occupies the next echelon down in the hierarchy of trust, and thus is assigned to defend the capital city.

It's worth pointing out, though, that the Republican Guard is deployed as much to stave off a coup arising from the ranks of the regular army as to repel a foreign invasion. This explains the stationing of regular divisions safely away from the capital: While they have an important mission, repressing the restive Shiite and Kurd populations that form a majority of the Iraqi populace, they are also a potential source of opposition to Saddam's rule. Mindful of regime security, Iraqi commanders will find it difficult to concentrate force or pursue a cohesive strategy.

Readiness: U.N. sanctions have denied the Iraqi military the ability to import repair parts -- the lifeblood of mechanized armed forces -- for well over a decade. While Baghdad has reportedly managed to obtain some items, notably jet engines for its Russian-built fighter aircraft, through middlemen such as Syria, the Iraqi military suffers from a severe lack of routine upkeep. Indeed, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies recently estimated that half of Iraq's weapons are inoperable for want of spares.

Iraq, consequently, has no realistic chance of contesting U.S. naval and air supremacy. The Iraqi navy, such as it was, now adorns the bottom of the Persian Gulf, courtesy in part of your humble columnist; while the Iraqi air order of battle numbers a paltry 200 fighter aircraft, of which only half are combat-ready. The plight of the army is equally grim.

The qualitative mismatch: Saddam's dilapidated military would be outmatched even if it were well-trained and well-maintained. The air force, supposedly battle-hardened after years of fighting Iran, failed to post a single victory over the coalition air armada in air-to-air combat during Desert Storm. And, after years of playing cat-and-mouse with coalition warplanes patrolling the no-fly zones, Iraqi anti-aircraft guns and missiles have failed to down a single aircraft.

Arrayed against this ragtag force are American services that labored during the 1990s to improve their command-and-control capabilities, link up combat units by means of computer networks and develop precision weaponry. These innovations have slashed the time it takes to locate a target, relay engagement orders to the firing unit, and place ordnance on that target. In short, today's military is far more capable than the one that crushed Iraq in 1991.

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and missile capabilities will be the wildcard in a new tilt between the United States and Iraq. The safest bet is that Saddam Hussein will have a small inventory of chemical-tipped Scud missiles at his disposal to oppose a U.S.-led invasion of his country -- and possibly wreak mischief elsewhere in the Middle East. How effectively he can deliver unconventional payloads against an invading army -- or Israel -- remains an open question.

An effective American strategy, then, will try to dislodge the Iraqi regime, persuade the regular army not to fight -- perhaps by making an example of a regular division -- and neutralize Saddam's unconventional arsenal. The Republican Guard and the security services could be in for a heck of a pounding.

James Holmes is a Ph.D. candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a graduate school co-administered by Tufts and Harvard universities.